After having checked out the immediate area around his new den, it was clearly time to go wandering a bit. The inside of the forest didn't feel as dangerous as before, so he headed bato the forest while it felt safer.
While he had missed most of the details during his run away from his old deurned more slowly, taking in the surroundings more closely. He had bee used to the twisted pnts and animals he old home, and was surprised by how he didn't spot any for nearly an hour while traveling babsp; Eventually he did finally start seeing them again, about halfway back to his old burrow, he came across the first razor fern. Shortly after he began seeing signs of twisted creatures, tracks too deep or te for the animals that left them to normally make, shimmering scales on the ground, and even a glimpse of a squirrel with color-shifting fur.
Upon arriving back at his old den, he sidered his memory of where the most abnormal creatures were, a off towards that dire. Worried about possible danger, he kept his ears perked up, twitg towards every noise he heard. Everything he heard souhreatening, though, such as the birds and the shuffling of is in the fallen leaves. Meanwhile, the feeling of fear and danger kept growing the further he went, but he suppressed it and tinued going.
Shortly afterwards, he found a clearing with a tree growing out from between some extremely rge bones; he watched, fused by it swaying against the wind. As he approached, he brushed up against a flower—which burst into fme—he yelped as it burnt some hair off his side with a foul st, before jumping backwards, rolling on the ground to extinguish the sm fur. Standing back up, he carefully examihe flain from a distahen moved around them to tinue his exploration.
Avoiding the clearly dangerous flowers, he noticed a bird fly towards the tree, only for the tree to grab it out of the sky with a number of branches. A momehe corpse of the bird nded beside the tree, vanishing behind the bones as it fell. Clearly this whole clearing was too risky to enter, so he left back the way he came and circled around it within the forested outskirts. Fortunately, it appeared the forest was less dangerous than the clearing with the abnormal tree, as nothing else surprised him during the time he assing it by.
tinuing onward, he ran across a snake nearly as rge as he was, though it appeared sated, as it merely kept an eye on him as he avoided it, rather than ag hostile. Before he even made it out of sight of the snake, he noticed an unusual pnt, shining in the dim light which filtered through the forest opy. Remembering what had happened with the flowers earlier, he kept well away from it just in case it could also harm him.
Moving into a new clearing a few moments ter, he immediately stopped at the sight before him. An absolutely immense lizard with fs just on the side fag him, back covered in spihat reached the leaves of the trees above. As it breathed, yelloread from pores on the sides of its body, sinking te patch of grass and underbrush, now dead and wilted. The tail was long and whipped bad forth, while the head was fag away from him. Additionally, the feeling of danger he had been suppressing had reached areme as he had moved into the clearing—far too inteo ignore now—in addition to the natural fear of the creature. Before his luck could run out, he quickly turned and raced bato the forest as quietly as he could manage, and didn't stop running until he reached his old den once again.
Upon reag his old den, he quickly ran baside, resting for a while until he was able to calm down. The lizard-beast clearly hadn't noticed him, or hadn't sidered him worth the trouble, as something that size would have been easily noticed crashing through the forest. The creature alone was terrifying enough to view, even if it wasn't actively chasing him.
After around half an hour he finally left the den again, heading back towards the edge of the forest where his new home was. This time he took a less direct path, finding little of i besides some more berry bushes and a few dens of various small creatures that he did not bother. Arriving back at his new haven, he went to head to sleep; it had been a long and stressful m.
Waking up around dusk, he decided to explore the edge of the forest, rather than going deeper into it like before. With only two dires he could go, he simply picked o random, fag the pins and heading right.
While he didn't find many creatures around, he did see signs of them, including some frightful ones, such as where aire path into the forest had been carved, trees toppled as if they were grass. In that case however, it was clearly quite old, with rees growing in and already nearly as wide as he was. Another frightening one ath where nothing grew for several times his body length. Other cases were less obvious, simple worn dirt paths surrounded by vegetation.
However, after a few hours of exploration, he ran across signs of humans. Before him stood a clearing in the woods, numerous stumps where trees had been cut down, with each stump having a fire burning within it. In the middle of the clearing stood a rge wooden structure, timbers holding aloft a roof over a rge colle of saws. Alongside the tool ste was lumber ste, a signifit quantity of processed wood, as well as a colle of fallen trees sitting to the side. Humans scurried around the pce chopping, cutting, and burning like they didn't have enough time to do everything.
As he looked around, he missed the watchtower, though the human within it didn't miss him. A sudden bst of a horn caught his attention—and all the humans’— sending them rag towards a previously unnoticed mound that revealed itself to be a bunker within the earth. Those watg from the towers simply leapt from the top, hitting the ground in a roll before rag toward the bunker as well. As they neared one ahey shouted, befrabbing one another as they made it to the door. As the st made it within, the doors shut with an immense g, followed by the noise of metal against metal.
In shock to the rapid ge, the fox simply stood there for a moment before darting off bato the forest, unaware that his coat had snagged on a bush, pulling loose a bit of his old winter fur.
Unsure if they were after him or something else, he decided that perhaps it would be best to go deeper into the forest instead of heading back towards his den. Perhaps even baear his older den would be a good idea, as he khe terrain there and had lost several hunters in the past near it. Deg on his pn, he headed ba roughly the right direade much easier by his new intelligence, allowing him to figure out approximately the right ao head giveime he had traveled today and the time he had traveled to find his new den.
